‘A Pioneer in the Struggle for Social Justice’: Manuel Larraín and Transnational Catholic Activism in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s

This article explores the development of inter-American Catholicism during the 1950s and 1960s. It analyses the role of the Chilean Catholic bishop Manuel Larraín (1900–1966) in his efforts to disseminate his diagnosis of underdevelopment in Latin America and to establish links with the Catholic world in the United States. Based on a review of his writings, the American press and documentation from Catholic organisations, it is suggested that the Chilean bishop advocated the implementation of social reforms and American collaboration to prevent the advance of communism and strengthen Catholicism on the continent.     

A spatial analysis of county-level outcomes in US Presidential elections: 1988–2000

This paper identifies spatial patterns of county-level presidential election outcomes from 1988 to 2000, and tests the retrospective (reward–punishment) and issue–priority models of voting behavior within the context of county-level geographical clusters. Based on our spatial analyses, we find that: the geographical concentration of the partisan vote has increased at both the global and regional scales. Globally, counties have become more likely to be clustered with similar counties in terms of their partisan support. Regionally, Democrats have increasingly received more votes from the East and the urban areas than Republican candidates while the opposite is true in the West and the rural areas. The regression analyses also support aspects of the issue–priority model of voting behavior, while the retrospective theory is confirmed only for 1996.     

涉外刑事案件处置之司法困境及对策探略

我国涉外刑事案件处置存在着处置依据变异,中外公民法律地位不平等,成本与效益失衡及国际警务合作脆弱等困境。摆脱困境的主要对策是强化法治观念,依法处置涉外刑事案件;不断完善我国涉外刑事案件处置法律体系及机制;夯实国际警务合作基础,大力加强国际警务合作。     

拉美金融脆弱性的根源及启示

拉美国家普遍具有金融脆弱性这一特征。这一现象归因于结构缺陷、汇率制度僵化、过早金融自由化、高度财政赤字化和债务化等多个方面。它带给发展中国家的启示是应选择适宜的汇率制度、外汇与债务管理制度、宏观经济政策 ,以期保持经济长期可持续发展     

论经济全球化条件下发展中国家的竞争政策

经济全球化条件下发展中国家的竞争政策既需要加强竞争法规制 ,维护竞争秩序 ,又需要通过竞争法豁免政策实现发展的目标。内容相互冲突的豁免和规制的并存 ,可能导致竞争政策的失效。为此 ,这种冲突必须得到适当的协调和控制。一方面 ,发展中国家在国际竞争政策的制定和发展过程中必须强调豁免政策的发展功能 ,拓展使用豁免政策的空间 ;另一方面 ,要加强对国际和国内限制竞争行为进行规制 ,并对豁免政策的使用施加适当的限制 ,避免滥用。     

中国政策科学的理论困境及其本土化出路

十多年来,我国政策科学在现实政策问题的推动下显得异常的活跃,但由于理论和方法主要是照搬其他学科和西方的体系,缺乏学科自身理论的建树和创新,这种理论上的困境导致学科整体发展缓慢,使政策科学学科长期停留在较低的水平。从讨论中国政策科学发展的基本情况和特点入手,分析政策科学在中国发展所面临的问题和困境的根源,试图从社会科学本土化的角度探讨中国公共政策科学追求自身完善,摆脱学科发展困境的某些理论和方法的问题。     

Administrative reform assistance and democracy promotion: exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s public administration reform principles for the neighbourhood countries

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA–democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU’s approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU’s PAR design to its democratic implications.     

The relative weight of character traits in political candidate evaluations: Warmth is more important than competence,leadership and integrity

Decades of research has found that voters’ electoral decisions to a significant degree are affected by character evaluations of candidates. Yet it remains unresolved which specific candidate traits voters find most important. In political science it is often argued that competence-related traits are most influential, whereas work in social psychology suggests that warmth-related traits are more influential. Here we test which character trait is the more influential in global candidate evaluations and vote choice using observational data from the ANES 1984–2008 and an original experiment conducted on a representative sample of English partisan respondents. Across the two studies we find that warmth is more influential than competence, leadership and integrity. Importantly, results hold across a wide range of alternative specifications and robustness analyses. We conclude by discussing theoretical and practical implications of the results.     

新思想库与奥巴马政府的亚洲政策决策——以新美国安全研究中心为例

在美国对外政策决策体系中,思想库在政策理念创新、人才储备、打造政策辩论平台以及教育和引导公众等方面具有非凡的作用。新近兴起的新美国安全研究中心对奥巴马政府的对外政策影响巨大。该中心的亚洲政策研究强调务实的态度,注重美国对亚洲事务的重新"参与",倡导强化和升级美国在亚洲的联盟关系,推动美国积极介入地区多边制度,其政策建议通过"旋转门制度"等对当前美国的亚洲政策决策产生了深刻影响。